Comox author Bridgette Clarkston and Bamfield author Louis Druehl’s book, Pacific Seaweeds: A Guide to Common Seaweeds of the West Coast, Updated and Expanded Edition, has been shortlisted for the nature category in the 19th annual Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards.
Their book is the authoritative guide to more than 200 common species of seaweeds from southeast Alaska to central California.
The Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards is an annual awards program run by independent media company Foreword Reviews as part of their mission to discover, review, and share the best books from small, university and indie publishers.
Since the first edition came out 15 years ago, Pacific Seaweeds has sold more than 10,000 copies.
This updated and expanded guide thoroughly documents every aspect of seaweed life, from species identification and seaweed biology to the essential—and often surprising—roles seaweeds play in the marine ecosystem and our everyday lives.
Seaweeds are used in everything from cosmetics to sustainable biofuels, and some species, like kelp, contribute to the remediation of coastal ecosystems.
Clarkston is a seaweed biologist, science educator and avid photographer with over a decade of teaching experience at the University of New Brunswick, University of British Columbia, and California State University, Monterey Bay.
She has discovered several new species of red seaweed, and is the author of A Field Guide to Seaweeds of the Pacific Northwest (2015).
Born and raised in Comox, she now makes her home in Monterey, California.
Louis D. Druehl is a Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University, where he taught and researched kelp for 36 years and was instrumental in establishing the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre.
He lives in Bamfield, where he and his wife, Rae Hopkins, operate Canadian Kelp Resources Ltd. He is also the author of the novel Cedar, Salmon and Weed (2015).
Pacific Seaweeds is among 17 titles throughout Canada and the USA shortlisted in the Nature category.
Winners in each of the 65 categories will be announced during the 2017 American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago on June 24, 2017.
